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Calgary’s major transit strategy gave the city plans for a massive network of specialized busways and bus-only lanes.

The cycling strategy called for barrier-separated bike routes in the core, and revamped education efforts for drivers and would-be commuter cyclists.

Now, Calgary is crafting a strategy for the most low-cost, common and simplest transportation method: walking.

It’s proven a dangerous way to get around this year, with three pedestrian fatalities so far, including two at crosswalks in a one-week span in February.

“We have somehow become immune to this and think it’s a normal way of city life. It’s not normal and it shouldn’t be acceptable,” said Coun. Druh Farrell, who has been calling for a citywide pedestrian strategy, primarily to improve safety.

Council learned Monday that work has already begun on this strategy. It will continue throughout 2014 and into next year, and like the cycling plan, it will look more broadly than safety, transportation GM Mac Logan said.

For the most basic and universal of all ways of getting around, how much can a strategy offer? Based on Chicago’s recent example, plenty.

The Windy City got more than 100 recommendations for improvements in its 2012 Pedestrian Plan, with an aim to improve not just safety, but also connectivity, livability and health.

Chicago is older, denser and far less car oriented than Calgary, so the city may have already started farther ahead than Calgary. And it had already begun traffic calming and other pedestrian-friendly measures.

“What is new is really a concerted effort to deploy them, with a measured focus on pedestrian safety,” said Peter Skosey, co-chair of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s pedestrian advisory council.

The city’s target is zero pedestrian fatalities in a decade, similar to the 10-year plan to end homelessness Calgary and other cities have pursued.

Much of the effort has focused in Chicago’s new “pedestrian safety zones” around schools and parks, Skosey said.

Speed cameras — something new to Chicago — have helped get drivers to pay attention to their speed in these zones, he said. The city has also added special walk signals that let pedestrians go before cars get green lights, and in some areas relief islands are being built in the middle of large intersections to prevent the need to rush through crosswalks.

The Chicago plan also urges standards for parking lots, more striped sidewalks, and calls for crash data and police training. The program Make Way for People has removed car parking spaces to create “more people-oriented space,” and has become a hit with business groups, Skosey said.

“There’s more pedestrian activity. It gives people more places to stop or shop,” he said in an interview.

Work on Calgary’s pedestrian plan is in its infancy. Planners will share the scope of it with councillors later this year.

Farrell sees plenty of potential in the strategy.

“How do you improve the pedestrian environment so that people feel comfortable and actually interested in going out and walking. That’s really the ultimate goal,” she said.

Calgary has already put renewed efforts into walking in recent years, beyond the $25-million Peace Bridge for pedestrians and cyclists.

The pedestrian realm and walkability are major planning considerations in any new development, suburban or inner city. It’s now harder for condo or office tower construction projects to take over sidewalk space. Central stretches of 10th Avenue S.W. that were long without sidewalks now have them.

And some of the dark and dingy underpasses between downtown and Beltline are getting brightened with a facelift, thanks in part to money redirected from the suburban pedestrian overpasses.

“For some years, we were spending the majority of our pedestrian infrastructure dollars on overpasses over places like McKnight Boulevard where no one ever used them,” Mayor Naheed Nenshi told reporters. He believes Calgary should boost the attention it pays to pedestrian needs, given that everybody walks or uses sidewalks at some point in their day.

In Calgary’s master transportation plan, pedestrians are supposed to be at the top of the priority “pyramid.”

Logan’s revelation about the coming pedestrian strategy came during a council debate over who is responsible for snow clearing on paved walkways adjacent to private property: the city or homeowners.

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